Solarpunk Winters: Set the Ice Free and What We're Imagining Now

It's happening! World Weaver Press just announced the table of contents for the short story anthology Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters. I can't wait to read it. As a huge fan of eco-lit and optimistic science fiction, I was inspired by Solarpunk Summers and excited to have my story, "Watch Out, Red Crusher!" included.

In writing my story, "Set the Ice Free," I included a lot of imagery from a puppy mill rescue I went on as part of my work at Pasado's Safe Haven, an animal sanctuary and a nonprofit on a mission to end animal cruelty. We were helping care for dogs with medical needs rescued from an abusive situation. The dogs were part of an active cruelty investigation so as I traveled across the state with my team, I couldn't talk about where I was going or what I was seeing. Instead, I journaled as we went and stored those visuals...I love the phrase "charged images." Later, I used them in my story.

I also fixed a personal issue I had with "Watch Out, Red Crusher!" My favorite works of fiction include animals and pay homage to another piece of literature. But I didn't do either in my own story. So there are animals in "Set the Ice Free" and it includes my favorite last line from a classic story.

I spent a lot of time asking: What is solar? What is punk? And what ignites when those two words compound: What is Solarpunk? I love the Solarpunk chats on Twitter.

I listened to two songs on repeat: "Sun" (Floe Shot Remix) by Under the Noise off the album Regeneration and "When is the Future?" by VNV Nation off of Noire.

I love being part of the solarpunk storytelling community. In Solarpunk Summers, I loved the settings in the Canadian Wilderness and the Australian desert, the empowered female protagonists, the heist plot featuring anti-facist art punks, and the sentient robotic tree. Again, I can't wait to read what the solarpunk authors have imagined for winter.

Here's a description of the book: These are stories of scientists working together to protect narwhals from an oil spill, to bring snow back to the mountains of Maine, to preserve ecosystems—even if they have to be under glass domes. They're stories of regular people rising to extraordinary circumstances to survive extreme winter weather, to fix a threat to their community's energy source, to save a living city from a deep-rooted sickness. Some stories take place after an environmental catastrophe, with luxury resorts and military bases and mafia strongholds transformed into sustainable communes; others rethink the way we could organize cities, using skybridges and seascrapers and constructed islands to adapt to the changes of the Anthropocene. Even when the nights are long, the future is bright in these seventeen diverse tales.


And the Table of Contents:

“Wings of Glass” by Wendy Nikel
 “Halps’ Promise” by Holly Schofield
 “A Shawl for Janice” by Sandra Ulbrich Almazan
 “The Healing” by Sarah Van Goethem
 “The Fugue of Winter” by Steve Toase
 “The Roots of Everything” by Heather Kitzman
 “Viam Inveniemus Aut Faciemus” by Tales from the EV Studio and Commando Jugendstil
“Recovering the Lost Art of Cuddling” by Tessa Fisher
“Oil and Ivory” by Jennifer Lee Rossman
 “Orchidaceae” by Thomas Badlan
 “The Things That Make It Worth It” by Lex T. Lindsay
 “Glâcehouse” by R. Jean Mathieu
 “Snow Globe” by Brian Burt
 “Rules for a Civilization” by Jerri Jerreat
 “On the Contrary, Yes” by Catherine F. King
 “Set the Ice Free” by Shel Graves
 “Black Ice City” by Andrew Dana Hudson